In recent years, the impact of party leaders on voting behavior has attracted increasing attention, leading some scholars to identify a phenomenon of ‘presidentialization’. Many extant studies of this topic in Japan are limited to one or two electoral cycles. In order to trace long-term trends, this paper analyses longitudinal survey data to investigate the existence and magnitude of the effect party leader evaluations exert on vote choice in Japan. Empirical results show that while only dominant and forceful personalities substantially (...) influenced voters' likelihood of supporting their parties in the 1980s and 1990s, by the 2000s assessments of most major party leaders had a significant impact on their parties' electoral performance. In short, party leaders affect vote choice due not to their personalities, but instead to the position they hold. We also test the hypotheses that the association between leader appraisal and voting behavior would be particularly conspicuous among voters who lack party identification and those who are most heavily exposed to media reportage. Analysis reveals that independent voters are not more likely to vote on the basis of leader evaluations than partisans; a leader effect is found more frequently among voters with greater exposure to election coverage on television. (shrink)

This study investigated whether the encoding and retrieval of plurality information and letter-case information of words in recognition memory can be inhibited. Response-deadline experiments using single words have indicted a controlled processing mode, whereas studies using meaningful sentences have indicated an automatic mode of processing plurality information. Two similar opposing views have existed on the processing of letter-case information. The abstractionist view contends that we retain the abstract lexical information and discard the superficial perceptual case information. The proceduralist view holds (...) that perceptual details cannot be separated from the lexical information. Using an intentional and an attention-diverted learning procedure and instructions to ignore plurality and case, we found that subjects experienced a consistent interference effect of changed plurality from study to test but slightly less interference from changed case, suggesting strong automaticity for plurality, and comparatively less automaticity, for case processing. (shrink)

When subjects give higher confidence or memory ratings to a test word in a recognition test, do they simply raise their criterion without making better discrimination, or do they raise both criterion and true discrimination between the studied words and the lures? Given that previous studies found subjects’ false alarm responses to lures slower than to SW, and recognition latency inversely correlated with the confidence rating, can the latency difference between the lures and SW be accounted for by confidence or (...) memory ratings? The present results showed that when subjects gave higher confidence or memory ratings, both their bias and sensitivity were raised, indicating that they could consciously distinguish the lures from the SW. However, a latency difference between true and false recognitions persisted after confidence and memory ratings were held constant, suggesting an unconscious source of discrimination between the two types of memory. (shrink)

Both general publics and elites have long used labels of left and right as cues for political communication and vote choice in Western democracies. This study examines the utility of these spatial semantics as means of encapsulating major political cleavages in East Asian democracies. Through analysis of public opinion surveys, we investigate the influence of organizational affiliation; views on socio-economic, religious, and issues, as well as attitudes toward the political system, as anchors of public understanding of the leftWestern leftright scale (...) in South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, left level of ideological conceptualization are likely related to party system development and democratic experience. (shrink)

The delineation of constituency boundaries and variations in vote distribution across districts often favor certain parties at the expense of others. Applying a hitherto under-utilized formula (Brookes, 1959; Johnston et al., 1999), this study investigates whether the mechanism translating votes into seats in Japan's single-member districts results in systematic partisan advantage that may influence election outcomes. Simulations are conducted for the 2003 and 2005 general elections under two scenarios: where the governing coalition and the main opposition party receive equal vote (...) shares, and where their vote shares are reversed from the actual results. Components of electoral bias are then disaggregated into size and distribution effects, and the impact of malapportionment, electorate size, turnout, and the role of third party/independent candidates on overall electoral bias is examined. Results show that while partisan bias exists, disadvantages toward one party in some components are likely to cancel out benefits derived from others, producing a relatively small net effect. Furthermore, electoral bias in Japan is found to award sectoral rather than partisan seat bonuses. (shrink)

Cowan's concept of a pure short-term memory (STM) capacity limit is equivalent to that of memory subitizing. However, a robust phenomenon well known in the Sternberg paradigm, that is, the linear increase of RT as a function of memory set size is not consistent with this concept. Cowan's STM capacity theory will remain incomplete until it can account for this phenomenon.

The finding of a correlation between normative responses to judgment and reasoning questions and cognitive capacity measures (SAT score) suggests that the cause of the non-normative responses is computational in nature. This actually is consistent with the rational competence view. The implications of this finding for the adaptation view of cognition are discussed.

As part of a new focus on sustainability, this study examines the effects of technological attributes, market potential, and environmental factors on the commercialization of technologies. A survey was conducted on two of Taiwan’s promising sustainable high-tech industries—solar photovoltaic (PV) and light emitting diodes (LEDs). We found that if the technologies possess the specific attributes of innovativeness, genericness, simplicity, and compatibility, as required by the potential adopters, the level of market potential will be more favorable and technology commercialization (TC) probability (...) will be higher. In addition, the results of regression analysis indicate that environmental requirements play moderating roles in affecting the relationships between market potential and TC probability. The empirical findings highlight the role of market potential as a mediator between technological attributes and the likelihood of commercialization. Furthermore, environmental factors moderate the influence of market potential on TC. The results of this study can provide firms’ operations with insights into resource allocation, sustainable development, and competitive advantages in an intensely competitive environment. (shrink)

Partiendo de la recurrencia del motivo de la pobreza de la experiencia en el marco de la Teoría crítica y su entorno más afín, nos proponemos tematizar la equivocidad que presenta el mismo mediante la delimitación de sus diferentes sentidos en Adorno, Horkheimer y Benjamin. Ello nos permitirá dejar esbozadas las líneas generales de una problemática que, a nuestro entender, es producto de cierta complementariedad pero a la vez tensión entre dichos sentidos.